Veggie Grill Closes In Berkeley, 2 Other Bay Area Cities

BERKELEY, CA — Veggie Grill closed its Berkeley location in early June, as well as five other California locations including Walnut Creek and Mountain View, its co-founder and CEO confirmed in an email to Patch.

The vegetarian/vegan chain restaurant first opened in 2006 in Irvine. Its Berkeley spot opened in September 2018 at 48 Shattuck Square in downtown Berkeley. In 2021, Veggie Grill launched its first Stand-Up Burgers from the Berkeley location.

In an email to Patch Tuesday evening, Veggie Grill's co-founder & CEO T.K. Pillan addressed not only the Berkeley closure but that of five other locations: Mountain View, Walnut Creek, Topanga, Downtown LA and Irvine Spectrum. The company has 21 remaining locations.

Here are Pillan's comments, addressed as a letter to the community:

"Dear Veggie Grill Community -

"It's been a rewarding, but not always easy journey since we began with our first Veggie Grill in 2006. And recently we had to make the difficult decision to close a subset of our restaurants to ensure our future. To provide business context, the shift to hybrid work models reduced the demand for our fast-casual offering in many of our trade areas. This combined with a few other headwinds led to our current reality of needing to rightsize our fleet of restaurants.

We delayed until we were able finalize all our closure plans before putting out this letter. With the recent closures of our Topanga, Downtown LA and Irvine Spectrum locations, and scheduled closures of Mountain View, Walnut Creek, and Berkeley in early June, we will be at our desired base of 21 restaurants with which to move forward. For guests who no longer have a Veggie Grill near them, we thank you for your love through years, and are disappointed we won't be able to serve you in the near term.

With this step back, we will now keep marching forward with a renewed commitment to deliver great plant-based food and uplifting experiences across our remaining 21 restaurants, and target opening new locations in the future.

"Sincerely, T.K. Pillan, Co-Founder & CEO, Veggie Grill"

Veggie Grill's 21 remaining locations include 16 in California, two in Oregon, two in Washington and one in Massachusetts, according to its website. In the Bay Area, Veggie Grill has two locations in San Jose at Westgate and Santana Row, and a North Bay location in Corte Madera.